


Careless People

by lacedramblings, yelenavasilyevna



Category: Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 - Malloy, Voyná i mir | War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (TV 2016)
Genre: 1920's AU, F/F, F/M, Gatsby AU, M/M, The Great Gatsby - Freeform, andrei is dead, don't be scared by all the ships, pierre and natasha are married but it is not pierre/natasha friendly, so i didn't tag it bc i'm not a monster, the kuragins are white russian emigrees, two of my favorite books it was going to happen eventually
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:15:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23851426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lacedramblings/pseuds/lacedramblings, https://archiveofourown.org/users/yelenavasilyevna/pseuds/yelenavasilyevna
Summary: A prince and a princess flee the Bolshevik revolution. A fiance dies in the war. An heiress honeymoons in Paris. The poor son of an immigrant leaves home to make his fortune— or at least his living.Now it's 1925. And they've all ended up in New York City.
Relationships: Anatole Kuragin/Natasha Rostova, Elena Kuragina/Natasha Rostova, Fyodor Dolokhov/Anatole Kuragin, Fyodor Dolokhov/Anatole Kuragin/Elena Kuragina, Fyodor Dolokhov/Elena Kuragina
Comments: 3
Kudos: 12





	Careless People

**_Paris, France, 1922_**

“Get out.” It came gravelly, dark with rage but somehow defeated, like the real world had finally settled back in, like what he really wanted, more than a fight, more than anything, was a good strong drink. “Just get out. Go. But if I ever see your face again, I swear to God I’ll kill you.”

That was the last Anatole had heard of Pierre. He’d picked himself up and gone home, or in any case, the flat he’d been calling home, as of late, thrown himself on the bed, and scarcely thought of Natasha again for three solid years. That wasn’t what he would claim later, of course. Maybe he’d even convinced himself that he really had spent all that time pining, dreaming of a great love lost. But it wasn’t the truth. Hélène would laugh at that, eventually-- she knew better, even if Natasha was stupid enough to fall for it.

Paris, France, 1922. The Great War finally resting a little more comfortably in its grave. The revolution? Not quite so. Hélène had always entertained some shred of fantasy, about returning to Russia, returning to real life. Surely the Bolshevik infestation wouldn’t hold water, surely it would collapse, it was only a matter of time. And when it did, she and Anatole wouldn’t be far away. But it’d been five years since they’d fled, just the two of them, with everything they could carry, their father’s money and lots of it. People like their father weren’t faring so well, in those days. War had ravaged Europe but they’d scraped by, in conditions that Prince Vassily would’ve been ashamed to see. And the Princess Kuragina just had to get over herself.

France was treating them a little better, these days. Their little flat was nothing like the estates and mansions of days gone by, but they were keeping themselves entertained. There was no shortage of White Russians in Paris, ex-nobility, some of them clinging to it more insistently than others. The Kuragins had been young, when they’d last seen their motherland, and unlike some of the older, decrepit old countesses, they’d sunk comfortably into the Lost Generation of artists and bohemes and drinkers (plenty of drinkers) without much trouble at all.

They were the same age as the century, twenty-two years old and beautiful, teaching themselves everything that Russia never had. Or else, being forced to learn. And less than a year later, they moved again, this time across the ocean, to a shiny new dream of a place called New York City.

**_New York City, United States, 1925_ **

As a rule, Dolokhov didn’t like rich people. He’d never really been asked to spend much time around them, and for that he was grateful, but the ones he had met were uniformly snide, snobbish, nauseating. Though, new money was a little better, and New York was chock full of it-- young men who generally just didn’t know what the hell to do with themselves. He’d been here only a couple of weeks, and he could already say that much for certain.

So it wasn’t like him to be sitting in a drawing room of any sort. But Nikolai Rostov was an old war buddy, and a Russian to boot, and war could make the sort of friends that money rarely influenced. Great equalizer, the western front. But they weren't in the trench anymore, and somehow, the Rostovs-- old, filthy rich Russian nobles that’d washed up on the East coast some time deep in the last century-- had caught wind that he’d be in New York. Nikolai, apparently, was off in London, doing whatever it was Americans did in Europe, these days. Dolokhov had thought that'd be the end of it; But his baby sister had taken it upon herself to extend an invitation.

He’d never met Natasha Rostova. She lived in a comically massive castle of a house, across the bay from the worn down little shack he was renting. The grounds alone could’ve housed dozens of his glorified cabin, but all they held were pristine lawns, and people with job titles like _floral architect_ and other thoroughly ridiculous sounding things. It looked, to him, about one revolution short of Versailles.

It wasn’t Natasha but her husband that came to greet him. A big, unwieldy man, Pierre Bezukhov had thick hands and thick glasses, that made his eyes look a few degrees too small for his face. And he hadn’t fought in the war-- which all but immediately made up Fedya’s mind about him.

“Fedya!” He said it like they were old friends, clapping him on the shoulder. “Ah, I’ve heard so much about you. Come inside. How are you? How was the trip from-- Chicago? Well, this must be a culture shock!” An awkward little laugh that was, like everything about Bezukhov, not quite in proportion.

“Long,” Dolokhov said, shoving his hands in his pockets, pretending not to notice the subtext. _Culture shock_ \-- rich people always had to remind you just how rich you weren’t. 

“She has a guest, I think,” he was saying, leading him through the house, with its high ceilings and its perfect shiny floors. “She likes to entertain, you know. So good at all that. Me, I never know what to say.” His gentle self-deprecating humor was irritating, for some reason, and Dolokhov mostly ignored him. Though he certainly wasn’t looking forward to putting up with another empty-headed heiress. One was more than enough.

When Pierre pushed open the door to the parlor, the light was almost blinding, streaming into the room from tall, floor-to-ceiling windows and flooding the room with late-afternoon sun. Two women were draped over a couch, facing away from him but sitting very close, as if there was some terribly important secret passing between them. But just as soon as he came in, one of them leapt to her feet, flush and smiling at him, and in an instant he could see the resemblance of his old friend Nikolai in Pierre’s little wife-- who was every bit as out of proportion to her husband as everything else of his. “You’re Nikolai’s friend?”

“Dolokhov,” he said.

“It’s so good to finally meet you.” She was young, very young, a great deal younger than Pierre, dressed in a pretty little afternoon frock and looking precisely like someone who belonged in a house like this. “Nikolai wrote about you often.”

“What did he say?”

“Oh, good things, good things, don’t be like that.” Dolokhov hadn’t really been asking _like that_ at all, it’d just felt like the appropriate thing to say. He didn’t actually care all that much what Nikolai Rostov had said. 

Dolokhov couldn’t be bothered to fill the silence with a _you have a beautiful home_ or whatever other polite little nicety might’ve been expected, and Natasha didn’t interest him enough to prompt anything else, so the room fell into a formal sort of silence. He stood there, with remarkable tolerance, watching Natasha squirm. Before she could say anything, a sigh rose from the other woman on the couch. “I liked your brother, when I met him. I’m surprised he fraternizes with such rude men.”

The voice was low and melodic, and shrouded in a thick, foreign accent. She stood, stretching, turning to look at him. And she smiled.

“Oh!” Said Natasha, oblivious. “Oh, I’m sorry! Fyodor, this is Hélène.” The guest was nothing like Natasha, in a way he couldn’t explain so much as it was just painfully obvious to see, older but darker too, properly beautiful in the most improper way. “She’s being _difficult_ on purpose,” a friendly little jab at her shoulder, “but she’s a very dear friend of mine. She’s really the most interesting woman in the world, I think.”

That seemed to amuse Hélène, but she didn’t deny it. He watched her, skeptical. She was smoking a cigarette, dangling thoughtlessly from her fingers, clearly the sort of rebellious young woman that it was so fashionable to be, in this city. Though, on her, it didn’t seem so much a costume as Dolokhov was perpetually inclined to assume. Her eyes were fixed on him deliberately, sweeping him from top to toe. “Charmed.”

He smiled. “And what has the most interesting woman in the world done to earn such a title?”

She lifted the cigarette to her lips. “You’ll have to find out for yourself. Surely you didn't think I'd tell you so quickly.”

“She’s from Paris!” said Natasha, helpfully.

This was tempting to believe, and she did look it, but Dolokhov would’ve known that accent anywhere. “By way of Petrograd, apparently.”

Surprisingly, Hélène laughed. “We’re all of us Russki here, monsieur.”

“Some of us more than others.”

“I knew you two would like each other,” Natasha cut in, practically rocking on her heels. Dolokhov hadn’t the faintest idea where she’d gotten that idea. In fact, he'd just then decided that he _didn’t_ like her. But that didn't stop him watching her, something horribly intoxicating about this woman, and far more interesting than anything else he'd seen, at the Bezukhov estate.

"Where are you staying, dear?"

It'd taken him a minute to realize Natasha was talking to him. "An apartment." And then, when she clearly expected more, "Across the bay."

Pierre had come back, this time with drinks, a decanter of something. Natasha, hostess, took a glass that must have been Hélène's and refilled it with an absolutely staggering amount of liquor, more like a tall glass of water than anything. Maybe she really was Russian. But Hélène only smiled, tapping her finger against the side. "Give that to your husband, love. I'm not quite the alcoholic, just yet."

Natasha, who was obviously not downing much scotch in her own time, was a little embarrassed, but did actually turn to offer it to Pierre. True to his word, he was standing, uncomfortable, at the outskirts of the room. Dolokhov started to say something to Hélène, but she was watching them so closely he let it falter off. Bezukhov had his wife by the arm, in a grip that couldn't be underestimated, and was muttering something to her, the drink still forgotten in Natasha's hand. Hélène shook her head, pouring herself a slightly more respectable shot. "She ought to leave him."

Dolokhov was startled, and said nothing, and she said nothing more, and so they fell into silence until Natasha returned-- maybe a little shaken, but smiling as ever. "Hélène lives there too," she offered, gingerly setting down the drink.

"Would've pegged you for an East Egg girl." She looked like she had a rich daddy to disappoint. 

"It's never good practice to make assumptions about me, Mr. Dolokhov."

Somehow, he believed her.

Hélène turned and crushed out her cigarette in the ashtray, making a Russianate sort of gesture with her hand that meant _well, then._

“I can’t stay for supper, Natya,” she said. “I’m hosting tonight.”

“One of your parties?”

“Afraid so.”

“I must come along, one of these times. I hear such fascinating stories.”

“Not your crowd at all, my dear.”

Natasha sort of reminded Dolokhov of a child being told she was _too young to go out, maybe when you’re older?_ And like a child, she clearly adored Hélène, to the point that her softly patronizing words seemed to pacify her well enough. “Well, no. But really, I swear I can hear them from my bedroom window.”

It was a joke, but it got Dolokhov’s attention. “I have a neighbor who throws parties," he mused.

"Yes. Surely they must have those, back west?”

"One hears rumors," he said, unperturbed.

"About parties?"

"About neighbors." He'd heard a dozen different things, about the people who lived next door to him. Massive, new-money deco place that was constantly swarming with people, rumored to be owned by any number of men: a crime boss, a disgraced prince, a murderer, a Parisian business man, a minor British noble, the list went on. 

"You can practically see her house from here," Natasha said.

"Mine as well."

Hélène looked very surprised that someone as lowly as him could possibly live anywhere near her, but she hid it with a reasonable amount of grace. “Hm."

“I would’ve stopped by, if I’d known.”

“I’m sure you will.” She said it with a breath of finality, at once a complaint and an invitation. Fedya didn’t realize then how much of their relationship would eventually be built on these double-meanings, carefully chosen words. For now, he just folded his arms, more and more pleased he hadn’t blown off this dinner. And he very nearly had.

“I’ll call on you soon,” Hélène was saying to Natasha, kissing her cheek. Then, “I’m glad to have met you, Mr. Dolokhov.”

“My pleasure."

“I'm sure,” she said, bid a tense farewell to Pierre, and just as soon, she was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos to the regular comet crew but particularly Alice, who has been wildly instrumental in getting this actually written (mostly by bullying me, but also as my beta) so massive shoutout to them, @lacedramblings on here. They have a 20's au of their own, if you love a good flapper-criminal Hélène as much as I do (and you can yell at them in the comments to update it).
> 
> This is probably going to be horribly complicated ship-wise so just buckle up and enjoy the ride. I live on comments and validation, so please god leave me some. Thanks for reading folks!


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